One of the most important things to always have is a form of expectation. These can be in a more concrete format where your team is expected to perform certain responsibilities as well as actions. This can be such as taking care of patients, making sure their patient files are updated, as well as treating their coworkers with respect.

However, there are a lot of things that aren’t as explicit typically in an office. Some of these are the way patients are supposed to be treated at your dental practice past the words: respectfully and nicely. Do you believe that your dental hygienists should always be smiling and very friendly towards patients to help create that atmosphere that you have worked so hard to establish?

A lot of these don’t have to be set in stone, but having a strong culture that is centered around your mission statement for opening up your dental practice is going to be important. It gives a relatively uniform way so that your staff knows how they should act when representing your dental practice.

Maintaining culture and keeping eye on things is significantly easier when you are physically at that practice. However, they are going to be times in which you can’t be in every single room during every single patient interaction. So, having a strong sense of your company‘s culture allows your staff to understand what is expected, and how to present themselves when you are not present.

It’s widely known that we spend a significant portion of our life at work. It’s also typically the dental practice owner’s goal that their staff enjoys working with them at their office. 

If your company culture has become a place where in-office friendships and outside-of-work friendships are frowned upon, it’s going to lead to a very unstable work environment. People typically want to enjoy going to work. It’s something that everybody strives to be able to do. Whether they are a front-of-office team member, dental hygienist, dental assistant, or Dentist.

So if everything is going well, there will be inside of the office and outside of office friendships that happen. 

This will overall boost the morale of your dental practice resulting in more happiness at work, and better team-to-patient relationships.

It’s widely known that happiness and smiling tend to be contagious. So when your team is going to be in a good mood, odds are they will share that happiness and upbeat mood with their patients.

You will also be able to get temps when necessary more quickly. We all know with the dental industry that reputation is everything. If you are known as an office that is not good to work with, and that has already spread throughout the dental community that you are a part of then you will more than likely not have much luck getting a temp when you need one.

However, if you are a dental practice that is widely known for being amazing to their team, being friendly, and overall being open then you will be able to fill vacant positions at your dental practice much more quickly, and easily.

No matter what, a business needs to make money in order to stay open. This includes even if you opened up a dental practice with the best and most honest intentions, but if you have no patients and no income then you will not be able to sustain.

All of the things we spoke about will help to benefit your dental practice as a whole. Strong company culture will have potential team members asking you for vacant positions. The positivity of your staff and high quality of treatment will have patients be referring others via word-of-mouth, or online.

Everything stems from the company culture that you helped to foster. Sometimes, this means swift action being taken against individuals that seek to disparage or destroy the culture that you are trying to advance.

This may be through your disciplinary ladder, or in extreme situations, directly to termination.

There are business owners that will write off company culture as non-important. They will say that work is simply a place for people to come and do their job, make money, and then go home.

Well, a dental practice or company will function using this train of thought. However, their staff will not be as happy as they could be, and that dental practice will not be as successful as it could be when the company culture is disregarded.

Ultimately, this is one of the biggest benefits of having a strong positive dental practice company culture. If you are a dental practice that genuinely fosters positivity towards your team, and offers competitive rates, there will be very few instances in which you will have turnover.

Like we said before, we spend a significant portion of our lives at work, and nobody wants to spend that time at a place that they hate.

Plus, as you know, there is a significant cost every time somebody leaves the company. Whether this is through onboarding a new team member or patients that you will lose due to the team member being gone and not being able to sustain the high patient volume.

As we also said, reputation is extremely important in the dental industry. So next time you have a turnover, try to look within the dental practice itself on where your company culture can be improved. If at all possible, attempt to have an exit interview with the individual leaving.